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Assassin's Creed (2007, Playstation 3) Review


RELIVE THE PAST TO RELIEVE THE FUTURE


Also for: Xbox 360, Xbox One


It's interesting to travel back to a time when open worlds were still regarded as up-and-coming. Developers were still trying to perfect the formula, figure out what to put where and how to structure it narratively. A spiritual successor to the 3D Prince of Persia-series, Ubisoft's original Assassin's Creed presents its world as a playground. It has the player traverse entire cities to get up close and personal with assassination targets, and then escape and disappear into the crowded streets.

Rather than simply exploring your surroundings, you exploit them. You feel like a silent predator as you enter the psyche of a professional medieval hitman with excellent parkour skills. Through his eyes, a city is no more than a series of interconnected obstacle courses. Crowds of people can be used as cover. Buildings are perceived as climbable facades, and once you reach their highest peak you can get back to the ground quickly by performing insane leaps of faith into haystacks far below.


Unfortunately, Assassin's Creed suffers from loads of serious flaws that make it hard to enjoy - and I'll get to those - but they cannot completely overshadow the sheer brilliance of this concept. Back in 2007 we had never experienced anything quite like this sense of freedom and verticality in open world games. Of course, today statements like that are redundant. We know that the franchise evolved into one of the most popular and influential in modern gaming. Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, its twelfth main entry, is about to be released as I type these words.

But the original Assassin's Creed was never considered a full-fledged masterpiece. Even back then it got mixed reviews, and with the passing of time the problems only become clearer. The controls seem to have a mind of their own, and the piss-poor PS3 framerate makes a mess of both movement and combat. The gameplay loop gets tedious awful quick, and poor audio mixing combined with a lack of subtitles makes the story hard to follow (at least for a non-native English speaker like myself, who also is slightly hard of hearing).


That last part is unfortunate, because from what I can glean the story is surprisingly good and nuanced. It mainly takes place in the Middle East, anno 1191, during the third crusade. Here you get to play as an assassin named Altair (voiced by Philip Shahbaz), who's stripped of his rank and privileges after ignoring the creed of his guild, putting all his fellows in danger. To restore his standing he needs to perform a series of assassinations. As he proceeds to do so, he's surprised to learn about his victims' sometimes noble agendas.

This is interspersed with a modern-day framing story about a kidnapped bartender, Desmond Miles (also Shahbaz), who is used as a guinea pig in a corporate experiment. He is forced to connect to his ancestor's genetic memories through a Virtual Reality-device called the Animus. His ancestor, as you might have guessed, is Altair. Both of the intriguing storylines involve the endless feud between the templars and the assassins. The claustrophobic framing story makes the historic open world feel all the more liberating.



That only lasts a short while, however, as the game starts repeating the same gameplay loop over and over. Before each assassination you need to research your target by eavesdropping, pickpocketing or interrogating his underlings. All of these activities involve laying low, blending in with the cityfolk and performing as little actual gameplay as possible. Under no circumstances could these restrictive tasks be called fun, and the information you get is far from useful.

To make matters worse, I despise Altair as an individual and dislike him as a character. His voice actor's flat delivery does little to remedy that. Altair starts off as arrogant to an insufferable degree, making his arc towards redemption all the more predictable. To add insult to injury, his controls is the most devastating flaw of the entire game, making him suffer as a player-character as well.


Melee combat relies heavily on timing through actions like parrying, dodging and chaining sword strikes to activate finishers. But the PS3-port's low framerate creates an input lag, making it difficult to respond in time. Even running around suffers. Too much is automated, and it sometimes feels like you're instructing Altair like a pet rather than embodying him. In the end he does as he damn well pleases.

Nowhere is this flaw as apparent as when you attempt to escape the city guards. They might chase you down a street, and if you run too close to a bench, Altair may suddenly decide to sit down and try to blend with the spectators. Of course, this doesn't work if they see you do it, and it's hard to seem inconspicuous when armor-clad soldiers surround you and start brandishing their swords.


I'm glad Assassin's Creed became a hit because of what it eventually led to, although I cannot say it's well-deserved in this case. Running around freely, climbing any wall, assassinating unsuspecting guards and hiding in the crowd is done with the perverse wish-fulfillment of a psychopath. I like that aspect, in spite of the control scheme's shortcomings. But the stifling stuff - all of the chores and repetitiveness of the main story - undermines all that. This game ultimately feels big and hollow. It's got the structure right, but needs to fill it with better content.

It also feels like a wasted opportunity to learn practically nothing about this time and place in history. We're treading some sacred ground here - your playgrounds are the cities of Damascus, Acre and Jerusalem in the Middle ages. And visually the cities may be highly detailed, but they seem drab and bled dry of all color. It's as if Altair put his hidden blade to their arteries and let their lifeblood spill into the gutter. It suits his bloodthirsty persona, I guess, since all you can really do well in Assassin's Creed is climb and murder.

[Screenshots from MobyGames: www.mobygames.com]

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